How to Gain The Trust of The Rich and Powerful

Edit: I confess, I completely missed the voice part of the essay when I was writing this. Therefore, I am editing my post ever so slightly to include the voice.

I know that Fox wanted us to talk about how language oppressed our social lives because of words used that could be harmful. I'm not going to write about that. There's very little language that offends me. All those so-called insulting terms, they're just words. What really oppressed my social circle, and this is what I thought when Fox first said language, was different spoken language, i.e. Spanish versus English. Why? Because it affected my life throughout high school, that's why. Where I hung out, who I hung out with, and when I would go out to just hang.

The first and most significant social circle was my school. I went to a school that, while British and equipped with a British faculty, had a largely Peruvian student body. Problem was, while I had grown up in Honduras, I had forgotten most of my Spanish. I could communicate enough to survive, but I couldn't socialise. This didn't go over well with my classmates, the School People. They had no interest in interacting with somebody that couldn't understand them. As a result, I was an outcast. I never heard about parties, people would ignore me when I needed help, nobody listened when I had something to say. You could say that I wasn't in the social circle. That's how bad the oppression was. I didn't even exist!

But there were other places as well. One of them was my church. I was heavily involved in the social projects that the church had, mostly because of my father. He was their priest. This meant I had to play the model child, and smile and dance like a pet monkey. I also had to shoulder certain responsibilities, including helping manage the youth events. I would help run retreats and festivals.

Because my dad was their boss, it meant that the Church People had to accept me. I sort of hate that kind of labeling, being the hijo del jefe. Nevertheless, the benefit of being included meant the church people actually got to know me, and I had the unique opportunity to observe a phenomenon I've dubbed "The Foreigner Effect". My Spanish was so bad, it was funny! I also had a really cute American accent, or so they would tell me. It seemed that no matter what I did, I was funny, because I was American. It really helped when it came to being a part of the group! This immunity led to me taking on the role of El Gringo Loco, The Crazy American. I would do crazy stunts and act out, and it would reward me with laughs. Because I was a foreigner, they accepted me!

What was so different about these two groups though? They're both Peruvians, they both thought my Spanish was beyond abominable, so why did one exclude me while the other include me? The answer is simple. Social castes! The explanation isn't quite so simple, unfortunately. Peru, like most of Latin America was very much divided according to income. The rich stayed with the rich and the poor stuck to the poor. If you didn't wear American brand clothing, you were poor! If you smoked and partied each weekend, you were rich! The poor set up stands on sidewalks to sell drinks and snacks, the rich ignored them as they walked past to their next apartment building. The School People were rich, the Church People were poor. Two separate castes. The question remains, who did I end up spending most of my time with?

If you're thinking the poor, because they were non-judgmental and openly accepting, you're way off mark. I was accepted, yes, but not because of me being such a great guy. It was because I made them feel better about themselves that here was a stupid American who couldn't speak simple Spanish. After my sophomore year in high school, I was growing frustrated, being alone at school all the time. It's difficult, managing everything without support! So I started to work harder in Spanish. I would practice it with my family. I would talk to the Peruvian guards at my church. I started talking to the School People in Spanish, many of them surprised at my growing aptitude. This paid off by senior year. This became my favourite year in my entire school life because I became great friends with the majority of the School People! To be honest, I had never had so many friends! But at what cost?

My hard work paid off at school, but it sacrificed what I had with the Church People. During my senior year, I rarely helped at an event, I never showed up at youth planning meetings, I just stopped caring. I tried talking to a few Church People here and there whose company I had enjoyed, but it was just boring. There was no spark, no fun. That's when I realised that I didn't have to act like, well, a complete dumbass in order to get attention! Now that I knew Spanish, I lost the foreign charm about me. I was just another rich snob to them. The oppression had reversed. When I knew little Spanish, the Church People accepted me while the School People rejected me. As that changed, so did my friendships. The Church People began to reject me while the School People accepted me. The point of all this? Learn a foreign language and you develop close friendships to rich people who will one day be powerful!